A Study on Passive Snubber for Improving the Switching Loss of Boost Converters

This paper proposes a passive snubber circuit to reduce switching losses in boost converters. The proposed circuit integrates an inductor, two capacitors, and three diodes into the conventional boost converter topology, enabling simultaneous reduction of turn-on and turn-off switching losses. Experimental validation under conditions of input voltage of 24 V, output voltage of 100 V, switching frequency of 350 kHz, and output power ranging from 10 to 100 W demonstrates that the proposed circuit achieves a maximum efficiency improvement of 14.19% at 10 W and a minimum improvement of 1.34% at 100 W compared to the conventional boost converter. Furthermore, thermal imaging results demonstrate that the switch operating temperature of the proposed circuit is up to 40°C lower than that of the conventional circuit, even without a heatsink. These results confirm that the proposed passive snubber effectively enhances efficiency and thermal performance, and can contribute to the development of high-efficiency, high-reliability boost converters.